fullborer

I have noticed my lack of ranged attacks and I'm definitely tempted by the Ice Golem - three Stitches and a Range 3 Free Action (initially thought that was an Attack). Interesting. I'm now officially more tempted by the Ice Golem. And I just thought of a fun conversion for him. Tempted +1. I'm not as sold on Misaki because of the card cost on activation. Marcus doesn't go through cards like Pokey Vik (no one does), but I still find myself short handed pretty regularly. Maybe I need to try her out and see how it actually plays. I have a very healthy respect for Alice (thanks to LaFemmeGeekita) - she's just too dangerous to ignore (Alice, not LFG), and her skirt is a great attachment... but yesterday I had a kind of "group conversion" idea for the box of Teddies that should be under my unadorned aluminum Festivus pole later this month, so I'm also super tempted by that... :happypuppet1

Hey Puppets and Puppettes, So far this thread is doing exactly what I’d hoped – keeping me thinking about my Puppet crew so I can get them done (to my satisfaction), and in time for Adepticon. More conversions are already underway. Huzzah! @themurphyfella – thanks, it’s usually just a matter of steering my crazy in “useful” directions. @ukrocky – thanks, he was shockingly easy to sculpt. I got knocked out of a game of Forumla De very early (“Wait, we can crash?”), started and finished him before their game ended. That’s insanely fast for me. It probably helps that he’s shaped like a tiny bunny snowman. @Cadilon – thanks, I sculpted some planks, made some planky bases and have been resin-casting them since. You can see the rest of the “set” I made here. If anyone’s interested in some, they can PM me. @yetischool – I can vouch that LaFemmeGeekita figured out the piggy-bacon-Hooded Rider thing, it’s just that she doesn’t have one. Yet. “Say, can I borrow that Hooded Rider and kill you with it?” “Sure. Hey, wait!” So while I’m posting – a very rough draft of my Marcus ShoeBox: Marcus Joss Moleman Razorspine Rattler Guild Hound December Acolyte ? ? ? More than half the slots are filled, but who makes the cut for the last three positions? (suggestions are solicited) Some current contenders are: Silurid, Chihuahua, Rattler #2, Witchling Stalker, Ice Golem and thanks to the Wyrd Black Friday sale, Teddies. I feel like Teddies really should be taken as a pair – one to sacrifice, one to play.* I’m not entirely sure how valid that is, but there will be playtesting regardless. *I know that sounds like some kind of in-game tactical conclusion from the guy who claims to put painting over playing, but I call it “rationalization for painting the Teddies I just bought”…

Greetings puppets and puppettes, My name is Chris and I’ll be playing the role of puppet-Marcus in this bloggy little exercise. I’d intended to chime in on this thread sooner, but had a bit of a holiday delay-of-gaming. Nevertheless, I really liked Tauwolf’s suggestion that we do this, and I think it will help keep me on track for the Puppet Wars event at Adepticon… I described myself in Tauwolf’s initial post as “highly obsessed with paint, often to the detriment of game play or finished forces” and I totally stand by that. I spend the vast majority of my miniature gaming time on the painting-hobby side of the bell curve (vs. the game-play side) and have for years. For the record, that’s not an issue of right/wrong or better/worse, I just really enjoy painting/sculpting/etc. and thus it gets the lion’s share of my hobby time. When I choose a force for a miniatures game, the decision-making process is primarily about the minis I’d be painting (thus my fledgling Malifaux crew is Colette’s Showgirls). You could show me a mini that comes with a game-winning guarantee, but I’ll never use it if I don’t like the figure. Along the same lines, a mini could be outright detrimental to game play and I’d still take it if I like the sculpt enough… Applying the “what minis I like” test to Puppet Wars was a little trickier, because I like a lot of the puppet minis. Nevertheless, choosing a master didn’t take that long. Purely on the minis, I immediately favored Marcus and Pokey Viktoria. I’m not as fond of some of the Mercenary puppets, but I like the look of virtually all the Stuffed Animals, so Marcus quickly became my primary master puppet. With Marcus selected for this exercise, I started cleaning and tweaking his mini. I wanted to keep this a fairly simple “paint-to-play” force, but part-way through cleaning the mold lines on Marcus, I found myself trying to make the staff look more like the puppet art by twisting one of the branches a bit more and adding a leaf. It sounds minor (and the end results are), but that leaf was hammered out of a piece of brass rod, filed into shape, pinned into the staff and then made a bit more 3D with some putty. It’s a 3-frakkin’-mm leaf, but that should give you an idea of the level of crazy I’m working with here. This would have been a perfectly reasonable place to stop messing with him and start painting. And I tried to do that, I really did. You can see from the photo below that I actually got him based and primed before my OCD (Obsessive Conversions Disorder) kicked in. I thought “hey, I’ve never sculpted flames before; maybe I should give that a try.” I broke out the “how to sculpt flames” section of Joe Orteza's handout from his green putty sculpting class from waaaay back when and gave it a try. My initial attempts were a bit too pyro-maniacal, so I trimmed back my huge leaping flames a couple of times and you can see the end result. It’s honestly not a big change, but neither was the leaf. I can spend a baffling amount of time on tiny cosmetic changes. I was pretty sure I was done (again) when I had one more flash of OCD. Marcus’s totem is a jackalope. There isn’t a separate jackalope puppet (yet? I’m not sure there’s even jackalope puppet art), so I could add one. “But where to get a tiny bunny… hmm… tiny bunny… tiny bunny… got it!” So I sculpted a Puppet-esque Peeps bunny totem from gray putty and added tiny antlers (again, shaped from brass rod) to make a Puppet-esque Peeps Jackalope (or PPJ). His name is Bun. I tucked the 10mm tall Bun between Marcus’s coat and staff; partially to protect him from in-game handling and partially to keep him away from the flaming arm since he might be made of sugar-coated marshmallow. We’ll see. I may paint him slightly toasted. And now I’m done converting Marcus. …probably. Tune in next time when my topic will be "Unnecessary Conversions to Puppet Pawns - Episode 1".

Since you mention Puppet Wars bases, I couldn’t resist chiming in. I’ll preface this by saying that I double-checked the Forum Rules before replying and I don’t think I’m stepping on any toes; but if I am Nathan can nix my note – naturally – with no hard feelings on my part. I really like the Puppet Wars minis and wanted bases worthy of such adorably creepy models. I didn’t want to scratch build every base though, so I made a set of eight and resin-cast them. Below is a set of my Planky Bases, just the bare resin. My Grateful Teddy is based on one, as is DaveyP’s Hooded Rider and Tauwolf’s Seamus. The sides are straight rather than beveled (PW) or rounded (Malifaux), but they’re the same size as the standard Puppet Wars bases so they fit right into the recessed part of a 30mm Malifaux base if that’s your thing. (that’s exactly the thing I’ll do if/when I get Zoraida painted) edit: I just realized its not clear from that photo that the irregular planks that stick out from the standard circle shape are only on the top half of the base. The bottom half is a plain circle so they all fit into a 30mm base... It’s my intention to offer these bases for sale on my site, but I haven’t gotten around to sorting out the webcart. Hopefully that changes next week, but if anyone’s interested or wants more info, please PM me.